With the increasing progress in the diversification and tendency toward fashion of clothing, in particular, clothing for women, a variety of knitted fabrics have been invented one after another, and put into practical use, which enriches life. The diversification and tendency toward fashion of clothing for women have progressed more and more with the times. Above all, there is a great demand for fashionable foundation clothing that has appropriate stretchability enabling the clothing to well fit the body of a wearer, that is thin and has beautiful knitted loops, and that, when it is formed in underwear, has a hemline invisible through outerwear. In addition, there is a tendency that a cut edge of knitted fabric is used as it is without hem finishing (hemming) so that the knitted fabric can be used as fashionable clothes.
Among the knitted fabrics, there is a great demand for fashionable knitted fabric that is thin and has beautiful knitted loops, and that has large stretchability enabling the fabric to well fit the body of a wearer. Furthermore, recently, there also is the following tendency: knitted fabric is formed, which is unlikely to be frayed at a cut edge when the fabric is cut, and the knitted fabric is used with a cut part thereof intact without processing an edge to form clothing, whereby a sawing operation is simplified, and such knitted fabric is used for fashionable clothes.
In conventional clothing, in order to prevent a cut edge (edge that is cut in an intact state) from being frayed, it is necessary to perform some finishing (processing). Such hem finishing necessitated by cutting is called hemming or the like, and its method is varied depending upon a portion and a material. For example, a cloth edge is sewn up while being folded back; a cloth edge is sewn up with another cloth or a stretchable tape attached thereto; or a cloth edge is subjected to thread stitching. This operation causes a considerable burden in sewing of clothing. Furthermore, a hemline of underwear is seen in a convex shape through outerwear, which impairs wearing comfort.
Conventionally, for making it unnecessary to finish an edge of clothing, there are methods for pulling out a yarn from spandex power net knitted fabric and for sewing knitted fabric, an end of a lace of which is cut so as to make it difficult for an edge to be frayed, into clothing. However, in any of these methods, an edge of clothing to be provided has a straight line or a substantially straight line, and edges that are not required to be finished can be formed only in upper and lower parallel lines.
If knitted fabric, in which an edge required not to be finished is formed in various shapes such as a straight line, a curve, or a combination thereof at various angles, and which has tightness, solidity, and a straining force as a whole, is used, thereby enabling an edge of knitted fabric required not to be finished to be used as an edge of clothing, clothing also can be formed that does not require hem finishing and has a straining force. Clothing can be formed from a body fabric that is continuous in a vertical direction without any sewn parts in a vertical direction, even though an upper end and a lower end of the fabric are not parallel to each other. Thus, flat clothing with less difference in level having a small number of sewn parts can be enjoyed.
The present invention has been achieved based on the study of simplification of sewing, and provision of new knitted fabric, clothing, and the like.
Conventionally, in the field of a tricot knitting machine, two guide bars are used, and the respective guide bars are moved in opposite directions at all times for each course to supply knitting yarns symmetrically, whereby a stable double tricot that is unlikely to be frayed is used widely. However, the above-mentioned knitted fabric has a disadvantage of poor stretchability. Therefore, in order to satisfy the demand for knitted fabric having large stretchability, stretchable knitted fabric of various kinds of knitted textures has been developed and manufactured. Even in the present invention, improvement of various kinds of knitted textures have been studied so as to solve the above-mentioned problem. As a result, the following was found. A double-tricot texture knitted by using a non-elastic yarn and an elastic yarn may be one potential solving means. However, during sewing, an elastic yarn overlapped with the back face of a non-elastic yarn tends to be cut at parts where knitting yarns cross in an X-shape. Therefore, there is a disadvantage that so-called pinholes may be generated. Furthermore, an elastic yarn is exposed to the surface side, which causes dye irregularity.
On the other hand, a 1×1 tricot texture (which also is called a single tricot or a single denbigh) knitted by using a non-elastic yarn with one guide bar has aligned knitted loops and thin; however, the knitted loops are likely to be frayed and lack stability (loop-drop is likely to occur). Thus, such a 1×1 tricot texture is hardly used for purposes other than a special purpose. However, the inventors of the present invention considered the following: if a non-elastic yarn and an elastic yarn are knitted so as to run side by side based on a 1×1 tricot, the non-elastic yarn and the elastic yarn do not cross each other; consequently, stretchable knitted fabric can be formed, which has a beautiful aligned texture and in which an elastic yarn having poor dye-affinity is positioned at lower loops (back side) of a non-elastic yarn to make it difficult to cause dye irregularity. Furthermore, the inventors of the present invention studied minimization of the fraying of even an intact cut edge by providing the knitted fabric with practicable stability, thereby solving the above-mentioned problem. Thus, the inventors of the present invention accomplished practical stretchable warp-knitted fabric that still keeps a fashionable feature of a 1×1 tricot and is unlikely to be frayed at a cut part, a method for manufacturing the stretchable warp-knitted fabric, and stretchable clothing using the stretchable warp-knitted fabric.
Prior to the description of the present invention, the meaning of main terms to be used in the specification of the present application will be described.
The term “stretchable warp-knitted fabric” refers to stretchable warp-knitted fabric based on a 1×1 tricot texture knitted by running a non-elastic yarn and an elastic yarn side by side.
The term “forming” of clothing refers to forming clothing from cloth such as knitted fabric, including all the seaming operations such as sewing with a sewing machine and seaming with an adhesive or heating.
The term “edge without hemming” refers to an intact cut edge, i.e., an edge of knitted fabric or clothing without hem finishing such as folding, hemstitching, etc., for preventing fraying.